Friday August 30
PRECARIOUS
PROMOTION: This year's Edinburgh Festival featured a late-night
series of top performers, with tickets going for £5. It
was a big success at attracting new audiences. But the experiment
won't be repeated because of the cost. So how do you get people
to try the arts? "In Britain - in Scotland - we live in a
society where classical music and the arts in general are not
an integral part of our lives. They are an add-on, seen by the
bulk of our people and our politicians as an over-expensive luxury,
and one that most people don't want. That fact is rooted in our
education system. It's not that the government devalues the arts
- to say so might suggest the possibility of a presumption on
their part of value in the first instance." The
Herald (Glasgow) 08/30/02
EMPTY
WORDS: Last week the head of the Scottish Arts Council spoke
a lot of good words about supporting the arts, increasing funding,
and making Scotland a place where the arts flourish. But it was
all a smokescreen, writes Keith Bruce. Even a cursory glance at
what the Council is doing shows a profound lack of ideas and originality.
And then there are those funding cuts... The
Herald (Glasgow) 08/30/02
Thursday August 29
ENTRY
DENIED: American arts festivals have had a bad time this summer
getting international artists into the country to perform. Visas
have been denied, and entry refused for numerous artists, leaving
arts organizations scrambling to find replacement performers at
the last minute for top artists who have been denied entry. "I
think it must be the worst summer for festivals in decades, if
not the worst ever. There is some irony in shutting down the arts
at a time when we should be encouraging international cultural
exchanges with the long view of understanding other countries."
Denver Post 08/29/02
BUSINESS
AS USUAL: Has art and popular culture changed since 9/11?
"You think about the atmosphere in the immediate aftermath.
It was a chorus of voices declaring, 'Irony is dead,' 'We'll never
laugh again,' 'No one is ever going to want to see another violent
action movie.' Well, all those forecasts proved to be wrong."
Dallas Morning News 08/28/02
- FAILURE
TO COMMUNICATE? So where are the great works of art capturing
the essence of 9/11? "for whatever reason, nothing has
appeared in the flood of books, films, songs, and other works
about the attacks like Guernica, Picasso's anguished masterpiece
painted in response to the ruinous bombing of a village in his
native Spain during civil war in the late 1930s."
Businessweek 08/28/02
FREEZE-DRIED:
How do you save artwork and manuscripts that have been submerged
in the Czech and German floods? First you freeze them. "Defunct
freezer facilities have been reopened across the country and ice-cream
sellers have stoically offered up their vans to allow storage
of the hundreds of thousands of items that have fallen foul of
the flood, whose stench-ridden waters, heavy with heating oil,
sewage, thick mud and more besides, surged into the basements,
ground and first floors of many of the city's cultural institutions
earlier this month. Nationwide appeals have been made for vacuum
chambers, freeze dryers, blotting paper and even boxes. The flood
has done more damage to the city than the Nazi and Soviet invasions
combined, say old Praguers." The
Guardian (UK) 08/29/02
MAY
THE FORCE BE IN YOU: Australia's census-takers are perplexed
that on last year's census, "0.37 percent of the nation's
population of 19 million, or 70,509 people, had written 'Jedi'
or a related response to an optional question about their faith
when the head count was taken last August." As Star Wars
fans know, "Jedi is a mystical faith followed by some of
the central characters in the Star Wars films. The prank
began early last year when Star Wars fans circulated an
e-mail across Australia saying the government would be forced
to recognize Jedi as an official religion if at least 10,000 people
named it on the census." CNN.com
08/28/02
Wednesday August
28
THE
INTERNET TICKET SCAM: Some internet ticket-buyers for opera,
theatre and ballet shows are being scammed by high tech thieves.
"The thieves copy official Web sites of premier venues to
almost every detail, including theatre layouts and restaurant
information, and constantly update shows. The crucial difference
is the scam site has its own credit card booking set-up, so your
money goes directly into their account." Sydney
Morning Herald 08/28/02
Tuesday August 27
MASSACHUSETTS
CUTS: The Massachusetts Cultural Council has begun cutting
programs and staff after seeing its budget cut from $19.1 million
to $7.3 million by the state legislature. The arts agency has
"cut 11 staff positions and developed a plan to eliminate
several of its 12 granting programs for cultural groups."
Boston Herald 08/27/02
THE
PROGRAM BOOK PROBLEM: When Performing Arts, publishers
of program books for arts groups in the Bay Area, went out of
business this summer, it told some clients but didn't tell others
(such as San Francisco Opera). "That left arts groups scrambling
for programs for fall shows. As a result, the unforeseen cost
for arts group to publish programs could go as high as $60,000
for the coming season." San Jose
Mercury-News 08/27/02
Monday August 26
RAISED
PROFILE: The Kennedy Center has long had a high profile. But
it has generally been more of a presenter for local residents
than a cultural destination for out-of-towners. That may be changing.
When Michael Kaiser became president of the Kennedy Center, with
its $125 million annual budget, he set a goal of making "the
31-year-old center a cultural destination for people from all
over the world rather than merely a place for local residents,
and to accomplish this by staging its own productions rather than
presenting someone else's." The
New York Times 08/26/02
CLAP
TRAP: Does applause mean anything anymore? In some cities,
any performance, no matter how mediocre, is greeted with a standing
ovation. In other cities, applause is never more than polite.
There was a time when making a terrific
noise after a well-executed performance was a sign of an audience's
engagement. Is it anymore? Toronto
Star 08/25/02
Sunday August 25
A
DOWNTURN - WORSE THINGS AHEAD? It's been a bad year for SIlicon
Valley arts groups. San Jose was at the center of the dotcom boom,
and since the the economy went bust, the arts are suffering. The
San Jose Symphony went out of business, the fledgling Ballet San
Jose Silicon Valley racked up a $2.4 million deficit and almost
went under, the San Jose Repertory Theatre pulled a $500,000 shortfall.
The San Jose Museum has had to cut back. Most arts groups are
in survival mode and cutting back. Some predict it will get worse:
"I don't think last year was the problem. I think this coming
year is going to be the problem.'' San
Jose Mercury News 08/24/02
SLASH
AND BURN: Massachusetts' cuts in its state arts funding of
62 percent from $19.1 million to $7.3 million is "one of
the deepest cuts in the country, according to the National Assembly
of State Arts Agencies." What are the consequences? State
arts officials don't know specifics yet, but "Massachusetts
will likely feel its cultural and economic muscles atrophy."
Boston Globe 08/22/02
LETTING
DOWN THE SIDE IN EDINBURGH: Scotland's arts are set up to
be orderly, traditional and unchallenging. So what to make of
the Edinburgh Fringe? It hardly fits the national character. "Our
arts are meant to be unembarrassing, organised and neat - preferably
with a beneficial effect on tourism and tweed. They should come
only from nice people and should produce a not-unpleasant kind
of somnolence. Which means that all these bloody enthusiasts tramping
across Edinburgh, subsidising nudity, quality independent films,
social comment, intellectual activity and cheap laughs at George
Bush's expense are letting the side down completely." The
Guardian (UK) 08/24/02
Friday August 23
SHRINKING
ENDOWMENTS: The shrinking stock market has reduced the value
of foundation endowments. "Nine of the 10 largest private
foundations' assets, in the first half of this year, fell by a
cumulative $8.3 billion. And that was before the market took a
steep dive this summer." That's leading some foundations
to consider reducing their grants to the arts. ALSO: many arts
groups' endowments have also gone down, reducing the support that
can be drawn from them. Backstage
08/22/02
Thursday August 22
ALL
OUT WAR: The US government is preparing an assault on digital
file traders. "Washington lawmakers have been crafting bills
that would give the entertainment industry the go-ahead to identify
individual users, disrupt file-trading services and prosecute
anyone suspected of digital piracy. The fear and loathing focused
at the file-trading community is reminiscent of 1990, just before
the Secret Service and the FBI conducted raids in order to smash
the loosely affiliated hacker organizations around the country."
Wired 08/22/02
Wednesday August
21
THE
COMMERCIAL NONPROFIT: Cleveland's Playhouse Square, with 10,000
seats, is America's second-largest performing arts center, after
Manhattan's Lincoln Center. "But it's also a rare case of
a flourishing nonprofit arts foundation that earns its own keep
- taking just a smidgen of government aid and private donations."
The secret? The theaters are part of a complex of "nontheater
assets, including a hotel and office buildings. The entire package
is valued at $124 million, with only $54 million in debt."
The commercial properties help to "pay for the arts and help
revitalize a grimy section of the city." Yahoo!
(Forbes) 08/19/02
BROADENING
EDINBURGH: The Edinburgh Festival, in contrast with the Fringe
Festival, is predictable - catering to a very specific demographic.
What would it take to revitalize what is arguably already a pretty
terrific festival? Some fresh new venues would help. "It
desperately needs to develop a space, a cave, a warehouse, a Roundhouse,
a Glasgow Tramway, a Bouffes du Nord - a place that can compete
with Fringe venues such as the Pleasance on an equal footing and
programme more variously and spontaneously." The
Telegraph (UK) 08/21/02
AFTERBURNERS:
It's almost time for the Burning Man, that annual orgy of art
interaction in the Nevade desert. But San Francisco Burners, want
to continue the festivities for a few days when they return home.Finding
a place to do so is proving difficult. "Between increased
police scrutiny, more sound-sensitive neighbors and the difficulty
of finding a place cavernous enough to exhibit say, a 40-foot
Spanish galleon, fire artists, a forest of 12-foot sculptures
and a band or two, many Burners are frustrated at not being able
to fully express themselves in their hometown." San
Francisco Chronicle 08/20/02
SYDNEY'S
NEW OPERA HOUSE BOSS: The Sydney Opera House is about ready
to announce its new director. "The shortlist is believed
to include the founder of World Orchestras, Tim Walker, and the
acting chief executive of the Opera House, Judith Isherwood."
Sydney Morning Herald 08/21/02
Tuesday August 20
WANTED
- CAVE DWELLERS (IT'S FOR ART): Some 150 people have applied
to live in a cave for two days as part of an English public art
project "which aims to recreate the 18th century fashion,
fuelled in part by the poets Alexander Pope and Thomas Gray, for
landowners to have a hermit living in some picturesque corner
of their estates.
'We want to explore the nature of solitude and whether that has
any resonance to anyone in the 21st century. Within what looks
like a bit of fun, people will consider ideas that go back to
Rousseau and Pope. It's a philosophical critique of the world
in which we live'." The Guardian
(UK) 08/20/02
Monday August 19
GET
ME A COP: Why make a law to ban cell phones in theatres? Because
asking nicely hasn't worked. "The warnings might as well
have been in Esperanto, because inevitably, at some point during
the first act, a cellphone goes off with its incessant beeps,
or worse, with a tinkling rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball
Game or the 1812 Overture. Heads are turned in the
general direction of the sound, and the tsk-tsks start to drown
out the ringing. Sometimes the culprits sheepishly dig deep into
their purses, but often the cannier boobs do nothing and look
around at their neighbors, just as annoyed as if they were the
offender, a strategy no doubt also used when flatulance is the
issue." Hartford Courant 08/18/02
Sunday August 18
A
PASSING GENERATION: Ann Landers, Pauline Kael, Mike Royko...a
generation of older voices of authority are falling away. "As
a group, they personified what one academic calls a media culture
of 'companionship' versus the current one of confrontation. Part
of the advantage these old-school communicators enjoyed in building
longevity was a more stable, paternalistic, homogenous structure
of media ownership. Just as the old Hollywood studios created
brand identity by locking their biggest stars into exclusive multiyear
contracts, so other media established continuity by cultivating
what was once a relatively limited pool of recognizable names
and voices." Los Angeles Times
08/12/02
SERIAL
WINNER: The success of an arts company is not so much dependent
on ticket sales as it is on subscription sales. Single ticket
buyers do not a successful company make. The father of the subscription
package evangelizes: "There is no arts boom, only a subscription
boom. Remember, you're not selling Tupperware. We are colourful,
we are glamorous, we are the performing arts! Describe your play
on the cover, offer discounts, use such enticements that you can
already hear somebody crying, `Martha, where's my chequebook?'"
Toronto Star 08/17/02
CALL-BLOCKING:
A proposed law to prohibit cell phones in New York theatres stands
a good chance of passing, with city councilors looking likely
to pass the law. But cell phone companies are upset. "Members
of the cell-phone industry who oppose the bill out of commercial
interests and principle expressed incredulity that the bill has
been met with this much fanfare." Wired
08/17/02
Friday August 16
SAVING
ART FROM THE WATER: Prague and Dresden are under water and
cultural treasures in both cities have been indanger from the
water. But it looks like most have been saved. "It looks
like we've been lucky. We had a lot of warning that the water
was coming, so that stuff was moved to higher ground." BBC
08/16/02
A
BAN ON CELL PHONES? A New York councilman has introduced a
bill to ban cell phones from public places. "New Yorkers
are sick and tired of people on their cell phones in the middle
of a play or a movie. It's distracting, it's annoying, and as
a public nuisance, it should be against the law." Wired
08/15/02
- Previously: CELLICIDE:
Lawmakers in New York and Toronto are considering a ban of cell
phones in public performance spaces such as concert halls. "I
think there would be an enormous amount of support for banning
cell phones in public performances and galleries." But
"how do you enforce the trend among the younger cell phone-savvy
generation to share the moment with their loved ones at rock
concerts?" Toronto Star 08/15/02
GOING
FOR THE ARTS: The Los Angeles School District was going to
build a new downtown high school. But, with the encouragement
of billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, the district has decided
to spend $20 million more and build a school of the arts. "We
believe that the arts are a powerful tool for learning. We are
proud to play a role in establishing a school of excellence in
a community that has endured so many broken promises."
Los Angeles Daily News 08/15/02
UNARTABLE?
There is a problem with art about 9/11. "Played to audiences
who know what you're going to say next - and are unable to react
naturally if you say anything different - art about that calendar-stopping
catastrophe will always struggle to do the two things that are
the justification of creative imagination: to expose and to provoke.
If there's a definite problem with art about the event, there
may also now be a potential difficulty with art after the event."
The Guardian (UK) 08/16/02
Thursday August 15
CONTEXT
OF COMPLAINT (AND PRAISE): Being a critic is much more than
reciting a list of observations. "Criticism, in our world,
ought to have one purpose: to serve as a catalyst for democratic
dialogue. It should not be a mere catalog of opinions. It might
express dissatisfaction with the general state of intellectual
affairs, or it might gather forces behind an idea or aesthetic
mood. But it should always evaluate. That makes politics an essential
component. In some fashion, every work of art is an expression
of a political stand in society." Chronicle
of Higher Education 08/09/02
CELLICIDE:
Lawmakers in New York and Toronto are considering a ban of cell
phones in public performance spaces such as concert halls. "I
think there would be an enormous amount of support for banning
cell phones in public performances and galleries." But "how
do you enforce the trend among the younger cell phone-savvy generation
to share the moment with their loved ones at rock concerts?"
Toronto Star 08/15/02
PINNING
DOWN THE BEAUTY THING: There is beauty in science, certainly.
But "is there a science of beauty? Are there equations behind
the most beautiful works of art? The consensus has been that this
is a hopeless quest... The Age (Melbourne)
08/15/02
Wednesday August
14
CLONING
NEW YORK: Over the past several years New York City has been
putting together "an immensely detailed, three-dimensional,
interactive, constantly updated map of New York City. The digital
NYCMap captures the five boroughs down to the square foot, incorporating
everything from skyscraper viewing platforms and building floorplans
to subway and sewer tubes and ancient faults in the schist below."
How much of the city's DNA could be collected? Could you even
clone it and rebuild elsewhere if some catastrophe were to occur?
Village Voice 08/13/02
THE
ZEN OF BEING WRONG: Critical writing is not an absolute, suggests
Terry Teachout. And critics ought to have enough confidence to
change their minds and admit it. "I don't mean to say that
critics should be wishy-washy, but we should also remember that
strong emotions sometimes masquerade as their opposite. I also
think the world of art would be a better place if we critics made
a point of eating crow from time to time." OpinionJournal
08/14/02
REBRANDING
POLAND: Poland is trying to spruce up its image. So it's doing
what any good corporation does these days - attack it as a marketing
challenge. It hired the country's largest ad agency to come up
with a new logo. "The year-long effort has produced a playful
new emblem, unveiled in Warsaw at the end of July, which its creators
hope will vanquish age-old stereotypes and effectively relaunch
Poland's image." The Poland account execs reprotedly even
consulted a Buddhist monk for help in defining the country's new-look
logo. Financial Times 08/13/02
MOB
MENTALITY: There's plenty of bad behavior at this year's Edinburgh
Fringe Festival. But it's coming from the audience, not the performers.
"A quick call around my colleagues opened the floodgates
of outrage: the man who hummed during the opera; the woman whose
mobile phone went off three times in the first half hour, and
who then turned it on to vibrate whereupon it beat out a samba
rhythm on the floorboards; the parents with the screaming children
who didnt tell them to shut up for an hour. If you are reading,
miscreants, hang your heads in shame." The
Times (UK) 08/14/02
Tuesday August 13
THE
WAR ON CONSUMERS? The giant recording and movie industries
seem to believe that one of America's biggest priorities ought
to be protecting their hold on their respective industries. So
what if protecting the status quo may not be in the public's best
interests? "We have the "War on Drugs" and the
"War on AIDS" and the "War on Terror" - does
this mean we'll see the "War on File Sharing" as the
next great American undertaking with the same effect as these
other "Wars" over the years?" The
Register 08/12/02
GOING
BACK TO HARLEM: "If the Apollo Theater once seemed a
down-on-its-luck old music hall that already had seen its brightest
days, now it's shaping up to be a catalyst for a new cultural
and touristic rejuvenation in Harlem. This follows on the development
spark lit a few years ago that's already brought new businesses,
shopping centers and diverse, more moneyed residents." Washington
Post 08/13/02
Monday August 12
HELP
FOR NY ARTISTS: A recovery fund to aid New York artists and
arts organizations affected by 9/11 has paid out $4.6 million
to 352 Artists and 135 Arts Groups. "The fund received 590
applications from individuals and 191 from organizations. The
grants were capped at $10,000 for artists and small businesses
and at $50,000 for nonprofit arts organizations. The average grant
for individuals was $5,500; for organizations $20,000."
The New York Times 08/12/02
CRITICAL
SANDTRAPS: Ah, it's all so predictable, most arts criticism
is. Is it true that most critical writing can be reduced to a
couple handfuls of easy formulas? Critic Philip Kennicott offers
the top ten most-abused traps for a critic. Washington
Post 08/11/02
COME
ON, WE'RE REALLY SMART: Are we dumber than ever? "It
has been the refrain, for five years and more, of both serious
intellectual commentators, normally from the Left, and various
uneasy bedfellows from the why-oh-why brigade on the Right, all
lined up in a dolorous puddle wringing damp hands at the vacuousness
of cultural life in Britain today: the mindless game shows, the
action flicks, the moron's music, the obsession with celebrity
trivia, the sham and hype and glitter, the inability to name the
prime minister before Margaret Thatcher, let alone the six wives
of Henry VIII." But "we are no dumber, collectively,
than we have ever been. We are, in fact, smarter. We have more
access to more information than ever before, and we scream for
it, and we are starting to scream, too, for quality."
The Observer (UK) 08/11/02
Friday August 9
ART
OF BUSINESS: "We like to believe that the best and most
interesting artists, even popular artists, make the stories and
pictures and music they do because they need to make them, not
just because they think they can earn a buck." And yet, art
is big business, and it is naive to believe that business doesn't
dictate much of what an artist does... Public
Arts (WCPN) 08/06/02
Thursday August 8
THE
NEW ART? "The terrorist attacks of 9/11 have brought
upon us all a realization that conceptual art, incomprehensible
'l.a.n.g.u.a.g.e p.o.e.t.r.y', avant-garde performance art, plotless
fiction, tuneless music, and inhuman postmodern architecture are
not going to be able to deal with the real evil of the world.
Only in the great artistic traditions of humankind will we find
adequate means of expression. The new movement in the arts, as
if it anticipated the need for them, has been busy recovering
those traditions. Who are the new classicists?" NewKlassical
08/06/02
L.A.
HOLDS ON TO THE ARTS: "The Los Angeles County Arts Commission,
largely shielded from county government's budget crunch, has earmarked
$2.27 million in grants for nonprofit cultural groups in 2002-03,
a figure just shy of last year's $2.35 million... The commission's
largest grant went to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra,
which will receive $107,730. The orchestra is one of 44 grant-recipient
groups with annual budgets over $800,000." Los
Angeles Times 08/08/02
Wednesday August
7
MAKING
A SCENE: "People in the arts business are forever talking
about 'scenes,' as in fashion scene, jazz scene, or gay scene.
But it took a sociologist, York University's Alan Blum, to stop
and meditate about what a 'scene' really is. As part of the university's
five-year study of urban culture, Culture of Cities, Blum analyzed
the idea of a scene in Public magazine last year. It was a revelation
for me, once I learned to enjoy the rich, corrugated phrase-making
of academic sociology. You know you're far down this road when
locutions like 'the libidinal circuits of intoxicated sociality'
begin to have the sea-green rhythm of poetry." The
Globe & Mail (Toronto) 08/07/02
CENSOR'S
SENTENCE: "One of Turkey's most famous film actresses,
Lale Mansur, could face a 15-year prison sentence because of her
outspoken views on the country's censorship laws. Mansur, who
was Istanbul State Opera's longest-serving prima ballerina before
taking up acting, has already received a suspended five-year sentence
under Turkey's anti-terrorism laws. She now faces new trials,
along with several other artists, relating to the publication
of books by banned authors." BBC
08/07/02
Tuesday August 6
THAT
WAS BEAUTIFUL: "What is beauty in art and how do we receive
and comprehend it? How does it register in a culture that has
grown increasingly ironic and skeptical about the images and visions
it creates? We tend to believe that the things we find beautiful
- a piece of music, a mountain landscape at dawn, Tiger Woods'
golf swing - have an intrinsic worth, an inner, if unmeasurable,
verity. We also reserve a pretty healthy measure of distance,
a wary, irony-laced mistrust of things that seem too ravishing
on the surface." San Francisco
Chronicle 08/06/02
Monday August 5
LET
ME ENTERTAIN YOU: "In the future, when anthropologists
study the last 100 years, they may refer to it as the Entertainment
Era, a time when distraction and diversion reigned supreme. Never
before has Homo sapiens consumed such a vast array of cultural
products or chased down vicarious experiences with such zealous
abandon. The need to escape has never been so inescapable. Is
this wired into our brains? Is it a consequence of cultural evolution?
Is it a reaction to the demands of modern life?"
Toronto Star 08/04/02
Sunday August 4
AND
BY 'STABILITY,' WE MEAN 'LOTS OF CASH': Lincoln Center is
the world's largest performing arts complex, and with great size
comes great financial difficulty. The center has been in nearly
continuous upheaval for the better part of a decade, but a new
president promise to bring stability. More than that, Reynold
Levy, who in May became Lincoln Center's fourth CEO in less than
two years, is promising to raise $1 billion in the next decade
to help stabilize the complex and fund a massive, and massively
controversial, renovation. Andante
(AP) 08/04/02
Friday August 2
MASSACHUSETTS
CUTS ARTS SPENDING 62 PERCENT: Despite the calls of thousands
of arts supporters lobbying their state representatives, the Massachusetts
state legislature cut the state's arts budget from $19.1 million
to $7.29 million for fiscal 2003, its lowest level since 1994.
The 62 percent cut will wipe out whole categories of programming
and funding. Boston Globe 08/02/02
ART
WITHOUT THE GOVERNMENT? What would happen if government arts
funding simply went away? A panel
put together by the Australia Council debated the question this
week. "Scenarios ranged from the rise of venture capitalists
prepared to invest in the future income stream of artists to the
'swallowing'of the arts by big business, undignified corporate
tussles over naming rights and aggressive branding of artworks."
Sydney Morning Herald 08/02/02
Thursday August 1
THE
FUTURE OF FAIR USE: "When Congress brought copyright
law into the digital era, in 1998, some in academe were initially
heartened by what they saw as compromises that, they hoped, would
protect fair use for digital materials. Unfortunately, they were
wrong. Recent actions by Congress and the federal courts - and
many more all-too-common acts of cowardice by publishers, colleges,
developers of search engines, and other concerned parties - have
demonstrated that fair use, while not quite dead, is dying. And
everyone who reads, writes, sings, does research, or teaches should
be up in arms. The real question is why so few people are complaining."
Chronicle of Higher Education 07/29/02
STAYING
AWAY: A combination of security concerns, semi-organized boycotts,
and plain old fear are leaving Israel nearly devoid of visiting
musicians, artists, and scholars. "Many artists have canceled
appearances because of concerns about Palestinian suicide bombers
who have attacked buses, hotels, restaurants and nightclubs...
But many Israelis say that although security concerns are almost
always the sole reason given for the cancellations, they believe
many people are not coming because they oppose Israel's actions
in the conflict with Palestinians, but do not want to say so publicly."
Washington Post 07/30/02
MEXICO
TAKES ON THE US: Mexican culture is flowing into the US. "Over
the next two years, and perhaps for a good deal longer, major
Mexican art shows will be at American museums almost without interruption.
There will also be many smaller shows, along with presentations
of Mexican music, theater and dance in modern as well as traditional
forms. 'People who appreciate the culture of a country begin to
identify with that country. I think it has a beneficial influence
on policy'." The New York Times
08/01/02
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